I have been looking around for a while for a proper online cooking school to take my cooking up a notch.

Even if you have been cooking for a while thier cooking school is very very good, everything is video based with test/quizzes (If you choose to take them) and the quality is exceptional.

The site is pretty new, so they are still adding videos to the cooking school, it's real pro chefs courses from Vancouver culinary institute.

You can sign up for free and have access to everything for a month, plenty of time to learn some kick ass stuff.

http://rouxbe.com/

Fucking Finally, I have waited for my book pusher to bring home this treasure for ages.

"On food and Cooking" by Harold McGee.

900+ pages of pure, unadulterated, food science. No recipes, no step by step useless ingredient lists. Instead, this book teaches you the how and why of everything in the food we eat. Molecule by molecule, every piece of meat, dairy, vegetable, fruit and everything else used by cooks in the kitchen is broken down to its essential science and taught to you.

This book teaches you the essentials on how to make your own recipes, not just follow someone elses because you will know EVERYTHING about food.

There's even a basic chemistry primer included so you can make the most of the scientific data presented.

The original is from 1984 when it became the go-to book for every master chef around the world. The revised edition is even more staggering.

This is the book that taught chefs such as Heston Blumenthal, Ferran Adrià Acosta and many more, the science of cooking.

This book is so good, that there's a barrage of flame posts constantly needing deletion in the amazon book reviews from cristian fundies lambasting it for being "evolutionary indoctrination and propaganda" lmao, I shit you not, that only made me want it more.

Also every episode of Good Eats is probably based on something from this book, just without the puppets and sketches

I've had it on loan from our public library for ages and it's been a constant struggle between me and some Danish university on who got to have it the next loan period, now I finally have my own copy.

If you'r at all interested in food and cooking, get this book.

I started learning this technique of cooking meat/fish some time ago from Heston Blumenthal (Science of Cooking) and it's a culinary miracle.

It's quite simple to get started, get yourself a vacuum pack device, they can be had quite cheap.

Now let's say you'r cooking a chunk of meat, if you want this to be tender and medium rare you traditionally cook it so the inside is medium and have the outer meat get's overcooked and dry.

With sous-vide, you drop whatever spices and salt pepper on the meat, then vacuum seal it. For medium rare meat you want to cook it to a temp. of 56C. So all you do now is heat a large bowl of water to 56C, drop in the vacuum sealed meat and let it cook for around 4-12 hours depending on the width of the meat. seal in your temperature probe inside the meat to monitor the internal temp, once it's reached your meat is done. If there's a lot of collogen (The white chewy stuff) then the meat needs 12 hours, it doesn't matter, as long as you hold the correct temp. you can cook it for days and it will be ok and it can't dry out because it's vacuum sealed.

After it's done you have a piece of meat that's the same pinkish color from the outside in, perfection.

We have a problem now, no browned layer outside so less flavour due to lack of Maillard reaction (The flavours comming from browning)

So grab a kitchen gass tourch and brown that fucker up good, there's your delicious outer crust.

I can go and buy any piece of meat now, cheap shit that would be as tender as a shoe and it will be tender enough that it almost falls apart.

If you want to go one extra step, brine the meat first, say a large chunk of meat you need to soak it in a 5% salt solution with some vinegar overnight, chicken and pork less time, around 4+6 hours, due to osmotic pressure the meat will reach equilibrium with the salt solution and will be perfectly salted all the way and not just lots of salt on the outside like normal salting, and the osmotic reaction will have drawn water inside the meat so it will be extra extra extra juicy and tender.

Yay for science!